Research Data Service Homepage: Introduction to Research Data Management

Planning your data management

The University of Bath Research Data Policy requires that all projects have a Data Management Plan. If you are applying to a UKRI funding council, or other major funder, they may ask you to provide a Data Management Plan with your application, otherwise you need to write a Data Management Plan when your study starts. Doctoral students are required to write a Data Management Plan by the time of confirmation.

Archiving and sharing data

At the end of your project you must retain data that underpins publications for at least 10 years after date of publication (unless your funder has other data retention requirements). In our Archiving and Sharing Data guide you can find out about depositing your data in a research data archive, including instructions on registering your dataset in Pure and depositing data in the University of Bath Research Data Archive. Depositing your data in a data archive or repository means that you will get a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for your dataset, which you can then use to share your data to other researchers.

Use the links below to find out more about archiving and sharing data.

Gathering data

When you work with data, from data collection to analysis and on to data publication and sharing, you should ensure that your data are well organised and are sufficiently well documented so that you, and other researchers, can understand your datasets during your project, and in the future. If you are working with data from human participants you must ensure that you obtain informed consent before collecting data, you must also store your data in accordance with the Data Protection Act.